1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and a method for extracting information from a figure in a document by use of an image processing technique and text information in the document, and for utilizing the extracted information for figure retrieval and document retrieval.
2. Description of the Related Art
In many cases, only a text portion is targeted for information extraction from a document containing figures. Even in the case of information extraction from a figure, a target thereof is limited to semi-structured or structured data, such as a table. There are various methods concerning recognition of characters in the figure, including those disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publications Nos. 2003-178263 and Hei 9 (1997)-185674. Basically, the figure is binarized, if necessary, to extract connected components. Thereafter, character portions are distinguished from other symbol portions by use of characteristics of the connected components. Thus, word recognition of the character portions is performed.